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Senate Years of Service: 1827-41; 1845-1850 Party: Adams; Anti-Jacksonian; Whig
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Chicago Historical Society |
WEBSTER, Daniel, a Representative from New Hampshire and a Representative and a
Senator from Massachusetts; born in Salisbury, N.H., January 18, 1782; attended
district schools and Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, N.H.; graduated from
Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., in 1801; principal of an academy at Fryeburg,
Maine, in 1802; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1805 and commenced practice
in Boscawen, near Salisbury, N.H.; moved to Portsmouth, N.H., in 1807 and
continued the practice of law; elected as a Federalist from New Hampshire to
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses (March 4, 1813-March 3, 1817); was not
a candidate for reelection in 1816 to the Fifteenth Congress; moved to Boston,
Mass., in 1816; achieved national fame as counsel representing Dartmouth
College before the United States Supreme Court in the Dartmouth College case
1816-1819; delegate to the Massachusetts State constitutional convention in
1820; elected from Massachusetts to the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth
Congresses and served from March 4, 1823, to May 30, 1827; chairman, Committee
on the Judiciary (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Congresses); elected as Adams
(later Anti-Jacksonian) on June 8, 1827, to the United States Senate for the
term beginning March 4, 1827, credentials presented on December 3, 1827, and
took oath of office on December 17, 1827; reelected as a Whig in 1833 and 1839
and served until his resignation, effective February 22, 1841; chairman,
Committee on Finance (Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses); unsuccessful
Whig candidate for president in 1836; appointed Secretary of State by President
William Henry Harrison and again by President John Tyler and served from 1841
to 1843; again elected as a Whig to the United States Senate and served from
March 4, 1845, to July 22, 1850, when he resigned; appointed Secretary of State
by President Millard Fillmore and served from July 22, 1850, until his death in
Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852; interment in the Winslow Cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography; Remini,
Robert.
Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time. New York: W.W. Norton,
1997; Baxter, Maurice.
One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union. Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1984; Webster, Daniel.
The Papers of Daniel Webster. Edited by Charles Wiltse, Harold
D. Moser, et al. 15 vols. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England,
1974-1989.
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